Princess of the Void: An Alien Abduction Romance

Void Princess Narika of the Glory Banner ascends the stepstool. Her black leather uniform squeaks as she extends her hand to her sister and chiefest rival. A few paces off, one of her armored marines stands in silent vigil.

"Aurora, Ziavra, and Kiar." Narika makes eye contact with Sykora's austere gaze. Just her fingertips touch the Princess Margrave's exposed stomach. "I pledge to be as good and present a member of your family as my rivalry with your mother allows me to be. I pledge that, should your life aboard the Black Pike ever prove overbearing or unsuited, should you require counsel or quietude, my door will be open to you."

Sykora's mouth tightens in barely restrained fury. The party has shrunk into silence.

"I pledge that, while you grow, I will save the worst of it for the rest of my neighbors, and keep the greatest of my strife from her sudorous brow," Narika says. "And that your mother will have plenty of time for you while I run the remnants of the Cloud Gate sector." A mirthless smile on her face as she meets her sister's eyes. "How's that?"

"Get out of Grant's way," Sykora says.

Narika steps back and nods to Grant. "Finish us out, Majesty."

"Don't tell him what to do," Sykora says. Grant steps in front of her and gives her a wink. Her icy frown cracks into a shared smile.

Grant takes a deep breath and lays his hand on his wife's stomach. "Aurora, Ziavra, and Kiar," he says, and his voice cracks on his son's name.

He forces himself to pause and take another breath. Sykora laces her fingers over his.

"I pledge to be there for every moment," he recites. "I pledge to try harder at being a dad than I've ever tried at anything. I pledge to take every lesson I ever learned on Maekyon about what to do, and mostly what not to do. I pledge to read and listen and learn everything I can about how to raise Taiikari kids. The good news, I guess, is that I barely picked up anything about how to raise a Maekyonite, so I'm hoping I won't have too many misconceptions. I pledge to raise you to be good. I pledge to make the sector you come into a safe and happy place for you to grow."

Sykora's sobbing silently into her hand. Grant shifts their held hands to one side and kisses her stomach.

"I pledge that when I meet you, I'll love you," he says. "I pledge to love you and your mom forever."

"Oh, Grant," Sykora whimpers, her voice high and feathery.

"Kiss her," Vora yells from the assembly. Grant scoops Sykora into the air as he stands, and kisses her fiercely. A deep gasping inhale from her pushes her little stomach against his and a surge of protective, possessive love tightens his arms around the mother of his children. Her face is sodden with happy tears. Her shoulders shake in his grip.

He kneels, still kissing her, and lowers her back into her seat before he breaks away.

Sykora shakily cups his cheek. "I got tears all over you, dove."

He kisses her wrist. "Some of it's me."

"Enjoy being able to budge her while you can, boss," Waian says. "Gonna throw your back out trying that."

Sykora throws her the horns, and they descend back into the crowd, to hugs and kisses on the cheek and slaps on the back. Grant has never had this many people he would call a friend. Never in his life. Almost all of them, he also calls a subject.

When he began his life among the Taiikari, that disturbed him. Now, and moreso every day, he spares it less and less concern. He's the Prince and these are his subjects. He used to think about how to bridge the gap and get them to treat him like a colleague, how to minimize his title. Now his chief concern is living up to it.

He takes drinks and good-natured ribs and happy greetings in stride, and everyone seems eager to pile all of the above on. One of the sacred rites of the conception party, it seems, is getting the husband shitfaced, and Sykora is as eager a participant in it as any of them. Owing to Grant's size it's taking his wife and subjects a lot of effort.

He looks in the crowd for Narika. She's already gone.

"Hey, Majesty."

A tug on Grant's sleeve. He turns, and in his cheery buzz he takes a moment to remember to angle his attention downward. Then a little upward again, as he's accidentally looked into the copious crocus cleavage of his future business partner, Countess Wenzai of Korak. In his defense it is a large and ostentatiously displayed visual target. Every piece in Wenzai's wardrobe must fulfill two requirements: black and bouncy.

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"Me and Tik were about to take a break from the noise to go stargazing." Wenzai grins up at him. "We've got an autosledge waiting. Do you and Her Majesty want to come along?"

"Uh—sure. I mean, I should ask Sykora." Grant turns around like a dog chasing its own tail. "Sykora?"

"Hello." Sykora says it around an Alamenkan wing. "Just let me find a place for this plate and I'll come along. Got to keep them from kidnapping you."

"Let's bring Ajax and Meena," Tikani says. "The Master Sergeant will go marine supersoldier on us if we try."

"Capital idea." Sykora finds a clear spot on a carved table.

Grant chuckles. "All right. They're nice stars. Let's get gazing. I can point out some constellations."

"There's none that you were born with," Sykora says.

"I can make some up," he says.

"That's the Pregnant Princess." Grant points.

Sykora squints as they crunch across the snow. "Where?"

"By that red milky way squiggle. That's her face. And then those three stars in there are her heirs."

"I approve of three." Wenzai leads the group up the soft, snowy incline of a tree-freckled hill. "Three is an excellent number."

"I've got my fingers crossed they're going to be as well-behaved as yours," Grant says, as they leave six winding footprint trails across the nightglowing powder.

Wenzai giggles. "Well-behaved? Ana's just gotten full-body invisibility down, and she's a little scampering terror. Try coaxing a buck-naked Taiikari kid off the garden shed roof before you say well-behaved."

"I know what he's saying, though," Tikani says. "Grantyde and I, we have a different rubric to work with. Yours will be like that, too, Majesty. You'll see. It's astonishing sometimes. How polite these little gals can be. Despite the day-to-day."

Wenzai's tail scoops some snow from the ground and whisks it at her husband.

"I wonder how much Maekyonite attitude they'll inherit," Sykora says. "Their father was quite the firebrand for a while. One of the few things I wouldn't lose sleep over if it wasn't passed on."

Grant snorts and ruffles her hair. He feels drunk and happy.

"Have you thought about which will be your first Princess-in-Waiting?" Wenzai asks.

"I like giving it to Aurora to start." Sykora's breath billows pale into the dark, back-lit by the increasingly distant autosledge headlamps. "Princess-in-Waiting Aurora. It has a lovely ring."

Grant raises a brow. "We pick when they're born?"

"Sure," Tikani says. "It's weird to hear about, but it makes sense once the kids arrive. And you can change whenever you like."

"Ana was the Countess-in-Waiting at first," Wenzai says. "But she got too anxious about it. She didn't get why she had to share responsibility for the things Orlo and Mava did. C'mere, Big Muscles."

Tikani scoops his wife up from the snow and carries her against his hip. "Mava's taking to it quite well."

Sykora tsks. "You're giving my husband agita, Korak."

"It, uh… it's not how you're supposed to raise Maekyonites," Grant confesses. "Having a favorite."

"Oh, no. It's not the same thing as a favorite." Wenzai's onyx earrings jangle as she shakes her head. "I don't have a favorite, and Tik's favorite is Orlo."

"She's joking," Tikani says.

"It's just that one of them is going to be your heiress, eventually. And not everyone has the temperament for it. I'd rather have been a Lady, to be honest. More time to schmooze and bang my husband. But none of my sisters were willing to take it from me."

"Jaxy and I are going to do a rotation," Meena says. "Every second cycle for the first hecto."

"Do you even need to name one?" Wenzai asks. "I mean, no offense. But you're not peerage. A lot of the proles I know don't bother."

Ajax smirks and bumps his hip into Meena's shoulder. "That's what I said. But Meen's a traditionalist sometimes."

Meena crosses her arms. "It's about the principle."

"Would you prefer that?" Sykora rubs Grant's forearm. "A rotation, I mean."

"I'm really not sure what I prefer." Grant squints into the gathering dark.

"We have time," Sykora says. "Plenty of time."

Grant nods in tipsy thought. "I need to read some books about this or something."

"I have a whole library of them," Tikani says. "Whatever you need."

"Thanks, Tik."

"My pleasure." Tikani shifts his grip on his wife into a front carry. "It was an eye-opener, raising an alien child. It made me uncover so many differences between Wenzai and I. But there's no better way to truly understand the way Taiikari are. And the more I understood Wen, the better I liked her."

Wenzai's glossy black lips plant a peck on her squidlike husband's emerald cheek. "Bet you and Sykora will be the same way."

Ajax has reached the crest of the hill first. The Black Pike marine tilts his head up under the shining roof of the night.

"Pretty," he remarks.

"Oh, they're gorgeous," his little pink wife coos.

Grant wonders which of these stars he'd also see from Maekyon. He imagines all the different night skies his children will see in their lives. The vast gulf between his childhood and theirs. Will he be able to relate to them? Will he be able to raise them how they ought to be?

Then the crunching of Sykora's boots and the industrious puffs of her breath snap him out of it. He smiles down at his alien wife as she steps to his side and takes his hand. She was his opposite in so many ways, and now she's the bright star around which his entire life now gratefully revolves.

"You see that blue one?" She points, and he hunkers into the snow to look up at her gesturing mitten. "A little brighter than the rest. Riiiight there."

He tips his head cheek-to-cheek with hers. "Yep."

"That's Qarnaq," she says. "That's where we're headed tomorrow. Your first world. Are you ready?"

He clicks his tongue. "Nope."

She laughs and scratches his chin. "I'd be worried if you'd said anything else. When I first met you, Majesty, you were overseeing my cell. Now you'll be overseeing one of my planets."

He gulps. He feels a little more sober than he did at the foot of the hill.

"Don't fret, dove, yes?" Sykora's tail rubs his back over the thick parka he's wearing. "I know it's hard not to. But I'll be there with you. We all will. Your command group."

He rests his chin on the top of her head. "That doesn't sound so bad, actually."

"Not so bad at all."

"Do you think I can do it?"

"I know you can," she whispers. "And tomorrow is your first day of proving it."